Free Astronomy Magazine May-June 2019

11 MAY-JUNE 2019 ASTRONAUTICS uniqueness of the target regions. In this issue and the next, we will remember the missions and strate- gies that led scientists and engi- neers to select landing sites, an aspect of the conquest of the Moon often overlooked by the media, but which was of fundamental impor- tance for the success of the Apollo Program. Images from the Project Apollo Archive, reworked in high resolution, complete this small con- satellite, thus providing useful im- ages to identify sites of particular interest for future landing missions with astronauts. The first two flights of the Ranger Program were launched in 1961 and were aimed at testing the basic systems of the spacecrafts in deep space. Sadly, the stages of the Agena rockets did not work properly and the spacecrafts eventually became unusable in orbit parking. tribution to the celebrations of the fiftieth anniversary. A few years before John F. Kennedy formalized, in September 1962, the decision of the United States to send men to the Moon, NASA had already set up, in 1959, a program of studies of the lunar surface, known as the Ranger Program. The aim was to launch a series of probes to the Moon capable of photographing the ground of our